We seem to have a good cop/bad cop routine. Mattis and Tillerson talk diplomacy while the C-in-C mirrors Kim Ding Dong’s bellicosity. You never know, talking Pyongyang’s language might work. Decades of diplomacy have left NK as mad and bad as ever. Clinton went soft and gave them nuclear material. GWB didn’t seem interested. Obama talked soft. The reward was NK inching ever closer to being a nuclear threat.

Then again it might not work. Socialism needs an enemy because it produces only shortages and misery. The peons must therefore be distracted, their anger directed out. Hence always enemies. It’s been capitalists, speculators and kulaks before. For Pyongyang it’s the Yankees. Tens of thousands of US troops in South Korea is a ready-made bogeyman.

Right now NK and the US are led by two men not in the habit of climbing down. East and West could point nuclear weapons at each other during the Cold War because self-preservation ruled. The key problem is that we don’t know if a spark of rationality exists in Pyongyang. So we’ll see, but I have no idea where this is going.

Phantom – the ‘US’ or whatever it is meddles in the affairs of every nation. Exactly where are NK, Iran, Russia, China? They are oceans away from the unguarded borders of the US through which a 20-times deportee can rape and murder a woman

PORTLAND, Ore. — A man accused of breaking into a 65-year-old woman’s home, sexually assaulting her and stealing her car was arrested after allegedly assaulting another woman and running from police.

Sergio Jose Martinez, 31, was caught July 24 after officers chased him through a neighborhood.

According to court documents filed in March 2017, Martinez has a history of illegal entry into the United States. He has been a transient in the Portland area for more than a year and has been deported 20 times.

Martinez has at least five probation violations for re-entering the United States. His most recent removal was in November 2016, according to the March court documents

This is criminal behaviour by the US authorities and should be the target of a lawsuit by the bereaved.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin police say they are investigating at least 10 cases involving a man allegedly assaulting and sexually assaulting women in an empty field in northeast Austin.

Additional charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault were brought against Nicodemo Coria-Gonzalez, 26, last week. Police say the string of incidents may date as far back as December 2015. Police referred to Coria-Gonzalez Tuesday as a “potential serial sexual assault predator.”

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says Coria-Gonzalez, of Mexico, is also being held on an ICE detainer. ICE records show he has been deported to Mexico five times between September 2012 and July 2015 based on his criminal convictions, which include three DWIs.

Note to Americans: protect your borders and protect your people. Just stay out of everybody else’s business because you’re being duped to fight in wars for (((others)))

Phantom – the US uses Korea, Japan and Taiwan as cat’s paws to irritate China. On the other side, since when and why did Estonia and Ukraine suddenly become America’s best friends? They are to irritate Russia. Likewise, all sorts of meddling goes on around Iran which has never attacked any country in modern times. This would have been US-policy amplified to nuclear proportions if Hillary had won.

The key thing is that America must not strike first. But if NK attacks Guam as it says it intends to, all hell will break loose. America will retaliate with missile strikes on NK, and NK will immediately kill tens of thousands in Seoul and elsewhere in SK by missile strikes and conventional long-range artillery. A full scale invasion across the demilitarised zone is also possible.

We know that NK has thousands of artillery pieces trained on Seoul and elsewhere. This means that limited military action cannot be considered. Only an overwhelming and devastating barrage will do, to get it over with asap.

Please get China to vacate the fake islands in the Pacific that it has built, then we can talk.

Phantom – please ask the US to withdraw from military bases that are not essential to the defence of its territory. We have already seen the world map of US bases and it looks like Earth has a bad case of acne.

Iran has effectively attacked Lebanon, Yemen and a number of other nations whose internal affairs it has interfered with.

Absolute garbage, and only fake news such as (((Reuters))) can keep it going:

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have started using a new route across the Gulf to funnel covert arms shipments to their Houthi allies in Yemen’s civil war, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters

The writer of that Reuters piece is one Jonathan Saul. Other most recent piece on his Reuters page are: European banks struggle to solve toxic shipping debt problem, Global shipping feels fallout from Maersk cyber attack and Lenders to ramp up pressure on holders of toxic shipping debt – survey. Older stories by Saul have similar headlines. Saul writes from London about the global shipping industry. That surely qualifies him as an expert on Yemen.

The Reuters piece makes a fantastic claim that has no practical logic. The author lacks knowledge of the actual conflict at hand. The sourcing is extremely dubious. Reuters itself can not find “Iran’s new route” on the map it provides.

Reuters is the major British news agency. Britain is heavily involved in the conflict in Yemen and the Saudis and their allies are the biggest customers of British weapon manufacturers. The piece on the ominous “new route” will surely make a splash but it disqualifies Reuters as a reliable source of information.

Those Scandinavian economies are relatively free market. They are more free market than you realise. They’ve figured out that relatively free markets are necessary to generate all the money that their welfare states suck up.

I don’t want this to go O/T, so you can have the last, erroneous word.

Phantom – until NK has a Rothschild bank then (((they))) won’t stop until it does. Libya ‘lost’ 140 tons of gold and got a shiny new bank and a national debt within a day of Gadaffi having been offed, and Syria is next. Strangely, Iran doesn’t have a Rothschild bank either – shurely shome cohenshidence? Then again, Kim Jr. may actually be a nutter.

No, no. We’ve realised that all along; it’s you that regularly calls them commies.

There are very few communist countries in the world actually. China, Vietnam and Cuba are at most communist in name; all have moved very, very far from Marxist principles. Vietnam and other SE Asian countries know that the market economy and being open to international capital is their only chance. When China moves into places like Africa, it isn’t bringing communism, it’s bringing market economics; in fact, much closer to “Manchester capitalism” than anything the west would try today.

These countries also have strong central planning and command, with major state intervention in the economy, but so have South Korea and Taiwan and the other big capitalist success stories in the region.

That leaves North Korea; and god knows what sort of economy they have.

On the contrary, I have regularly said that Scandinavian countries are relatively free market. Always this has been in response to commies claiming that they’re “socialist economies”.

For the last time: they are not socialist economies. They are free market. Their welfare states are socialist, but they exist as parasites on the backs of relatively unregulated economies. They realise, up there, that only capitalism and markets can generate the wealth required by the welfare states.

Those Scandinavian economies are relatively free market. They are more free market than you realise. They’ve figured out that relatively free markets are necessary to generate all the money that their welfare states suck up.

The performance of Vietnam in the past 15 years or more has been hugely impressive

They had every right in the world to hold a grudge against the United States; they chose to have a very good economic political and military relationship instead, One that has helped both Nations

When North Korea is sticking around with nuclear weapons like a bunch of morons, yet now sees steadily rising incomes, steadily rising education, in a nation that is modernizing in every way as fast as It can

Why would anyone care what sort of bank North Korea has or does not have?

In Korea, we have the most perfect controlled experiment you can imagine

South Korea is pro-Western, and has a prosperous and well educated population that well have designed and manufactured the smart phone that you use every day

North Korea has a desperately poor population that has seen Real starvation in recent times

Same Korean people, very different results

Yet you condemn the west every time you can, and don’t seem to have any real complaints about what North Korea has done to its people. I would say that your sympathies here are with North Korea, as they are with Putey Putin the shirtless wonder

North Korea is obviously a case of a total failure of a state. The famine in the 1990s led to the deaths of over half a million people, and possibly several million.
By the middle of the decade, the NK government of mismanagement was forced to seek international food aid, and the response was prompt and generous. China and S Korea were the biggest donors, but for several years the US provided most food aid of all.

There was absolutely no gratitude shown by the NK govt, it even refused aid if the donor country insisted on supervising distribution (to prevent it being seized by govt and corrupt elites and then used as a political tool). Even today NK – a mainly agricultural country – is still far from being self-sufficient in food. It’s pathetic that this wretch of a govt, after mismanaging the country into a vast famine, is now threatening terrible war on the very countries that gave free food to its starving people.

Phantom – that communism is less efficient than free-enterprise is confirmed in the manner that you suggest: Taiwan vs formerly-communist China, West Germany vs East Germany, South Korea vs North Korea. Where your explanation fails is in what is life actually like in NK. People have got into NK and found it to be far from the starvation economy that is typically described just as Gadaffi’s Libya was, in reality, far better than any other country in Africa. So what is NK like?

The army is heavily involved in construction, as a source of cheap labour for the building of apartment complexes, hotels, roads, bridges, and so on. Contrary to the popular image of the North Korean soldier as a goose-stepping, brainwashed loyalist and ruthless killing machine, the average military man is likely to spend more time building things than working to crush the “puppet” regime in Seoul. Even state media often refers to them as “soldier-builders.” Military units are now little more than free labour teams.

NK is an utterly corrupt, utterly despotic monarchy with a billionaire man-child sociopath egomaniac in charge. He is the closest thing to Stalin for 60 years in terms of his despotism and absolute control over who lives or dies.

This man-child sociopath egomaniac is now being challenged by a billionaire man-child sociopath egomaniac in Washington. But the difference is that the Washington billionaire man-child sociopath egomaniac has his finger on the nuclear button, and might well announce nuclear war via Twitter.

//In Korea, we have the most perfect controlled experiment you can imagine//

That’s all true, but there are other interesting comparisions in Asia that show different results.

China has a land border with India, and both are huge countries with enormous populations and not so long ago were impoverished and famine-ridden.

China is a dictatorship and generally a command economy, yet its people are almost all well nourished, well educated, healthy and with the confidence that hard work will get you ahead.

India on the other hand is a democracy with a market economy, but its success as far as its people are concerned is at best extremely patchy. There is a relatively small educated middle class that’s well off, but otherwise vast poverty, illiteracy, total lack of education and possibly the worst health care you can imagine, localised famine is never far away in India. Then there’s all that stuff about forced marriages, untouchables, honour killings etc.

Despite its lack of free speech and democracy etc, the Chinese govt acts responsibly towards its people, plans ahead, runs the place well internally and in external dealings and is aware of environment issues. What’s more, while India has received a lot of foreign investment in recent years, the Chinese pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and foreign capital arrived only after the country had got its act together.
A lot of this has to do with the Chinese character, of course, but there are at least some cases where a benevolent dictatorship looks after its people better than an open democracy.

ahhh everyone has conniptions when the US has a reactionary in the white house.

It’s a style of governing that upsets the Left but it didn’t always, LBJ was a friggin loon that used to go off on a regular basis, and so were many others just not recently that’s all.

The land of NorK has been a problem since the days of Truman (democrat) put 100s of thousands of troops into battle there. It was said earlier Clinton gave them Billions and let them keep their uranium, Bush basically other than making them part of the axis of evil ignored them, and Obama appeased EVERYONE.

We will find out just how crazy the wee mad man is very shortly. It has been leaked that behind the scene talks are going on, so lets see what happens.

In honor of those in Panic I’m gonna change my musical selection for the week.

Those Scandinavian economies are relatively free market. They are more free market than you realise.

Of course the operative word there is the adverb ‘relatively’, relative to what?

However, we are largely in agreement here Pete. It’s your insistence on labelling any system with even a hint of social care to it ‘Commie’ which results in you having to defend these blatant contradictions.

Take the NHS. How is it funded and used? By everyone, according to ability and by everyone, according to need. It is a communist system. Most people don’t think of it in this way because, as with the Devil, commies persuaded most people that they don’t exist.

They hijacked the language and use euphemisms like Progressive, social democracy and (in the US) liberal.

But such things are outside of the economy anyway. When I describe Scandinavian economies as relatively free market I mean the productive economy. They are relatively free of red tape in those economies, more free than in the UK, for example. What governments do with our money once they stolen it is not part of the productive economy.

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

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